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It is far more complex, though. Schools are, in fact, soft targets due to Gun Free Zone laws. That may not be the criteria for selecting schools as targets, but this doesn't change the fact that any armed response takes several minutes to arrive. The longer the shooter has without resistance, the more damage he can do. There hasn't, as far as I can recall, been a single school shooter that stopped before armed responders arrived.
I was listening to the students yesterday and the one thing many of them said directly or indirectly was: We are children and you have to protect us. That is not a direct quote. The problem with this is that they do not want any responsibility in their own safety. At the same time; they will be the grownups tomorrow; they will be our leaders. They did make great speeches; but they have to acknowledge that only they are in the right place to stop the next threat. So far most of these attacks have not been stopped while in progress. Either the assailant committed suicide or our police caught them after the fact. There have been a few that were arrested while they were planning an attack.
We can help our students help themselves by better planning and also give them better tools. I have worked for companies that use swipe cards and have magnetic locks on the doors. That might have helped in this last shooting. Once any student is suspended or expelled; their access could be pulled immediately. Possibly even the new facial recognition software could help if expelled or suspended students were immediately listed as 'access denied'? Bullet proof foyers or metal detectors can also play a roll; but we have to watch out that we could spend too much time on security and not enough on the primary goal of learning.
We should also look at the classroom doors and how we could fortify them against bullets. But we have to keep in mind that the intruder could be inside of one of these classrooms.
The problem I have with 'children being children' is they are the only ones present. If these shooters are going to be stopped; our children have to act as adults and stop them. I am not saying to run towards trouble if they have an escape route. But, in the case where there is no escape route, they have to meet aggression with aggression. We could even make training into a game. But we have to work with our students to come up with strong defensive moves to counter these attacks. I wished that we could arm our students; but we could be arming the wrong people and there is always the chance of 'friendly fire'. So we have to work through this and empower our young and treat them as equal partners in their own protection. Possibly we could have groups of volunteers that work together with our 'experts' to stop the next shootings?
What will really stop these shootings is if the monsters get their butts kicked and don't achieve the death toll. In other words; they do not get their place in history!
I do think that we can make some stronger gun laws. The problem that I have is that we have a hard time defining what weapons we want to make illegal. I also have a problem with the fact that law abiding citizens will cooperate and the criminals will not; they could easily hide weapons until they had a need. Would our police have to stop and search everybody to see if they were in compliance? Do we lock up all that would not comply; even though they never committed any crimes? Would the parents of the children, that spoke in the rallies, mind if our government searched their homes for weapons they felt were not appropriate? There are many 'freedom issues' that have to be addressed in creating stronger laws.
Bump stocks and better background checks might be a good start without too much resistance. Identifying potential problems better would also help.
It is far more complex, though. Schools are, in fact, soft targets due to Gun Free Zone laws. That may not be the criteria for selecting schools as targets, but this doesn't change the fact that any armed response takes several minutes to arrive. The longer the shooter has without resistance, the more damage he can do. There hasn't, as far as I can recall, been a single school shooter that stopped before armed responders arrived.
You just don't get it do ya? I have said about a dozen times and the truth doesn't sink in. I'll try one last time. Gun Free School Zones from the 1990 H.W. Bush signed Gun Free School Zone Act, refers to a ban onunauthorized guns whether it is in the parking lot (a Peoria student got busted for that yesterday), a locker, on their person (including shooters) or even a teacher who isn't allowed to carry by state law (whether the state allows it and they don't have proper certification or the state doesn't allow it.) That is all. IF the state allows guns on teachers with CCL, the school is STILL a gun free zone despite a gun being on campus based on the definition in the Gun Free School Zone law signed by President H.W. Bush in 1990. Same goes for armed police officers on campus too. By you continuing on and on about schools being gun free after I explained this to you, proves that you don't get it. Read the damn law before you try and tell me I am wrong because the law covers exactly what i said a gun free zone is, a 1,000 foot radius where guns are only allowed for staff with CCL in states that allow CCL for teachers or armed police on campus. PERIOD. One last time, a Gun Free School Zone does NOT make the school gun free.
As for the rest of your claim, there is no proof from any shooting that spots are picked specifically for being soft targets except for the theater shooting and maybe Vegas. The spots have been picked due to a connection or someone there. If you can find a motive to prove me wrong, I'm all ears however they typically aren't published.
I do agree that armed response can take a while to arrive, but there is as much proof of shooters picking soft targets as there is for a civilian "good guy with a gun" to stop a "bad guy with a gun." I have shot rifles as a Boy Scout but I don't feel comfortable shooting to protect my kids if godforbid this happens at my school. And honestly, it scares me to hope that another teacher could be called on to do it. A few of the students on the CNN debate last night talked about ricochet bullets hitting them, firing more bullets creates that. I had a friend in the boy scouts hit at a camporee from a stray 20 years ago this May and there is still no telling where it came from, I don't want to worry about harming another student while protecting mine.
I was listening to the students yesterday and the one thing many of them said directly or indirectly was: We are children and you have to protect us. That is not a direct quote. The problem with this is that they do not want any responsibility in their own safety. At the same time; they will be the grownups tomorrow; they will be our leaders. They did make great speeches; but they have to acknowledge that only they are in the right place to stop the next threat. So far most of these attacks have not been stopped while in progress. Either the assailant committed suicide or our police caught them after the fact. There have been a few that were arrested while they were planning an attack.
We can help our students help themselves by better planning and also give them better tools. I have worked for companies that use swipe cards and have magnetic locks on the doors. That might have helped in this last shooting. Once any student is suspended or expelled; their access could be pulled immediately. Possibly even the new facial recognition software could help if expelled or suspended students were immediately listed as 'access denied'? Bullet proof foyers or metal detectors can also play a roll; but we have to watch out that we could spend too much time on security and not enough on the primary goal of learning.
We should also look at the classroom doors and how we could fortify them against bullets. But we have to keep in mind that the intruder could be inside of one of these classrooms.
The problem I have with 'children being children' is they are the only ones present. If these shooters are going to be stopped; our children have to act as adults and stop them. I am not saying to run towards trouble if they have an escape route. But, in the case where there is no escape route, they have to meet aggression with aggression. We could even make training into a game. But we have to work with our students to come up with strong defensive moves to counter these attacks. I wished that we could arm our students; but we could be arming the wrong people and there is always the chance of 'friendly fire'. So we have to work through this and empower our young and treat them as equal partners in their own protection. Possibly we could have groups of volunteers that work together with our 'experts' to stop the next shootings?
What will really stop these shootings is if the monsters get their butts kicked and don't achieve the death toll. In other words; they do not get their place in history!
I do think that we can make some stronger gun laws. The problem that I have is that we have a hard time defining what weapons we want to make illegal. I also have a problem with the fact that law abiding citizens will cooperate and the criminals will not; they could easily hide weapons until they had a need. Would our police have to stop and search everybody to see if they were in compliance? Do we lock up all that would not comply; even though they never committed any crimes? Would the parents of the children, that spoke in the rallies, mind if our government searched their homes for weapons they felt were not appropriate? There are many 'freedom issues' that have to be addressed in creating stronger laws.
Bump stocks and better background checks might be a good start without too much resistance. Identifying potential problems better would also help.
Here is the thing, they ARE kids. Besides those who were in scouts or in JROTC, how many seriously take drills. I have talked about in on of the threads a comment of me taking down an intruder with MMA like moves when I was a senior in high school. I was already an Eagle Scout by then so I had to go through and run an Emergency Preparedness drill. That said, many fire drills weren't taken serious and the lockdown dismissal still was always seen as a way to get out early.
Now today I am an educator and I take these seriously. Part of it is I am older and part of it is because I realize these kids are kids even though we want them to be more. We have to remember that they are indeed kids. High schoolers may be able to help, but I remember and still see many are immature. They don't turn a certain age and become mature one day. It happens over time and I even get more mature, even at 30 everyday. We all do.
Here is the thing, they ARE kids. Besides those who were in scouts or in JROTC, how many seriously take drills. I have talked about in on of the threads a comment of me taking down an intruder with MMA like moves when I was a senior in high school. I was already an Eagle Scout by then so I had to go through and run an Emergency Preparedness drill. That said, many fire drills weren't taken serious and the lockdown dismissal still was always seen as a way to get out early.
Now today I am an educator and I take these seriously. Part of it is I am older and part of it is because I realize these kids are kids even though we want them to be more. We have to remember that they are indeed kids. High schoolers may be able to help, but I remember and still see many are immature. They don't turn a certain age and become mature one day. It happens over time and I even get more mature, even at 30 everyday. We all do.
I started carrying my single shot 52D (.22) to school when I was 12 to shoot on our HS rifle team. We had no HS shootings back then. I carried it for four years and I was responsible to keep it safe and locked up until I could lock it in our HS armory. I even made a hand made mahogany gun case that I kept my glove, vest, sling and additional sights in as I transported it back and forth from school on the bus. The little kids use to use it for a foot rest on the bus! Different times!
As far as "ARE kids" - they are the only ones in the area when attacked. Dying is not just a 'grownup' thing. Unfortunately we have to work with our 'kids' so they can help themselves as grownups! If they are in the sights of a shooter and the nearest police are minutes away; who else is there? Even though I carried a weapon to school; I question the use of weapons as a deterrent - I worry about friendly fire.
Like I said before; why not get HS volunteers to work with our trained experts in simulations to see how they can respond aggressively with the few tools they have at their disposal (maybe even test 'safe' tools that we could supply). Surely we have some old school buildings that could be used for simulations. Treating these new 'leaders' as partners would help empower them and come up with possible solutions.
A man with a gun is a citizen, and a man without a gun is a subject.
And even in this the term GUN can be just as figurative, if you don't have a weapon and don't have the ability to get or own a weapon, then you are subject to someone else's whim's and attitudes or desires.
That's insulting. I don't have a gun and I'm as much a citizen as you are. Don't tell people whether they're citizens or not. Maybe you need your gun to be a citizen. I don't.
Even so, it doesn't say a man without an AR-15 is a subject. Someone who feels he needs an AR-15 to prove his citizenship or whatever if clearly deranged. By this measure, someone who feels he needs and AR-15 shouldn't be allowed to have one.
there will be no weapons ban. if the democrats use a weapons ban as a midterm platform any potential for a 'blue wave' will become a blue puddle. I hope the democrats continue to push for this losing issue. americans won't vote in politicians that want to ban weapons: democrats or republicans.
the 2nd amendment is popular. cnn and other sjw propaganda pushed by the progressive media won't change that.
there will be no weapons ban. if the democrats use a weapons ban as a midterm platform any potential for a 'blue wave' will become a blue puddle. I hope the democrats continue to push for this losing issue. americans won't vote in politicians that want to ban weapons: democrats or republicans.
the 2nd amendment is popular. cnn and other sjw propaganda pushed by the progressive media won't change that.
Does Vegas have odds on that? Probably just overall, will Democrats win the House or not. I wonder how the line has changed since Parkland? That's the closest probably.
I'm a Republican, Conservative American and I will vote for a candidate up to and including banning AR-15s and the like. Beyond that, no. And I won't vote for one who opposes it.
You just don't get it do ya? I have said about a dozen times and the truth doesn't sink in. I'll try one last time. Gun Free School Zones from the 1990 H.W. Bush signed Gun Free School Zone Act, refers to a ban onunauthorized guns whether it is in the parking lot (a Peoria student got busted for that yesterday), a locker, on their person (including shooters) or even a teacher who isn't allowed to carry by state law (whether the state allows it and they don't have proper certification or the state doesn't allow it.) That is all. IF the state allows guns on teachers with CCL, the school is STILL a gun free zone despite a gun being on campus based on the definition in the Gun Free School Zone law signed by President H.W. Bush in 1990. Same goes for armed police officers on campus too. By you continuing on and on about schools being gun free after I explained this to you, proves that you don't get it. Read the damn law before you try and tell me I am wrong because the law covers exactly what i said a gun free zone is, a 1,000 foot radius where guns are only allowed for staff with CCL in states that allow CCL for teachers or armed police on campus. PERIOD. One last time, a Gun Free School Zone does NOT make the school gun free.
I've been debating over this law since before it was even passed. I know exactly what the intent was, and I know what the effect has been. I'm not going to argue semantics over whether or not one armed police officer negates the "gun free" part of the law. The entire law is based around the premise that law-abiding citizens are incapable of walking onto school grounds with a firearm without causing harm. We can continue to debate over this little tidbit of information, we can disagree about the realistic effects of the GFZ law, or we can agree that the entire idea is monumentally idiotic.
I realize that states have the right to overrule the GFZ law by allowing teachers to carry if they choose to do so. My issue with that is as follows: Why should every state be subject to its own interpretation of the federal law in this regard, while the other side of the debate is calling for federal level bans that cannot be overruled at the state level? What gives one side more leeway in passing firearms related laws than the other? The GFZ law is a demonstrable failure at its most basic level, and it was a failure the second that the first shooting took place in an area which was designated gun free. The law shouldn't even exist, so why should the citizens of each individual state be forced to jump through hoops to mitigate the damage? If firearms are going to be a state's rights issue, they need to be a state's rights issue. Period. If not, then any federal law should be the end all and be all of firearms law. You can't randomly decide that this firearms law falls under state's rights while that one doesn't. It's an all or nothing proposition.
By the way, the GFZ law that Bush signed is not the law that is currently in effect. It was struck down and had to be rewritten in order for it to pass, and the law now in effect was signed by Clinton.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mkpunk
As for the rest of your claim, there is no proof from any shooting that spots are picked specifically for being soft targets except for the theater shooting and maybe Vegas. The spots have been picked due to a connection or someone there. If you can find a motive to prove me wrong, I'm all ears however they typically aren't published.
At no point have I claimed that schools are picked for shootings because they are soft targets. I said that they are soft targets because there is no way for the adults on the scene to form any effective resistance to a shooter. The fact that they aren't picked due to the lack of armed response in no way negates the fact that there is no armed response and the entire campus is, therefore, a soft target.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mkpunk
I do agree that armed response can take a while to arrive, but there is as much proof of shooters picking soft targets as there is for a civilian "good guy with a gun" to stop a "bad guy with a gun." I have shot rifles as a Boy Scout but I don't feel comfortable shooting to protect my kids if godforbid this happens at my school. And honestly, it scares me to hope that another teacher could be called on to do it. A few of the students on the CNN debate last night talked about ricochet bullets hitting them, firing more bullets creates that. I had a friend in the boy scouts hit at a camporee from a stray 20 years ago this May and there is still no telling where it came from, I don't want to worry about harming another student while protecting mine.
In a perfect world, we wouldn't be having this conversation because there would be no violence. We don't live in a perfect world, though. We live in the real world, where violence happens every single day. There is no guarantee that any measure we can take at this point will be enough to stop a school shooting. The only guarantee is that what we are currently doing is not working. Is there a chance that a ricochet could happen in the event of teachers confronting a school shooter? Yes, there is. Is there a chance that the teacher could miss the shooter and accidentally strike a student? Yes, there is. However, given the fact that the shooter is definitely going to shoot students, that is an acceptable chance to take. It is far better than leaving students and teachers defenseless in the face of an armed attacker.
Here are my suggestions for gun control. They are just suggestions and some would need much further research and some would involve people losing their rights.
End gun free zones. If it's private property the business has a choice to allow firearms or not.
To purchase a firearm regardless of type one has to be 21 years of age. Exceptions are for those in the military or law enforcement, then the minimum would be 18.
Any purchase of a firearm regardless of type either purchased new or secondary sales has to go thru an FFL which gets a call to the NICS. The purchaser is required to have a purchase permit from their local county. In the cases of concealed carry holders they do not need the purchase permit.
No more than 3 firearms per month can be purchased.
Any magazine that is deemed "large capacity" has to be purchased thru an FFL. How we deem large capacity will need to be worked out. For instance a Kel Tec PMR 30 comes standard with a 30 round mag. A full size Glock comes with either a 13 or 15 round mag depending on caliber. Standard size mag for an AR type rifle is 20 , I believe.
Any crime committed with a firearm is an automatic 10 year sentence, no plea bargains, no early parole in addition to whatever time the particular crime gets. Regardless of age.
Any violation of the Federal Firearms laws is an automatic 5 year sentence. Regardless of age. If more than one is broken, the sentence gets added together. There will need to be some exceptions to this. What I'm trying to target is illegal guns being used by teens and felons.
Any person that is diagnosed with mental disorders and are taking drugs to maintain their lives in society do not have the right to purchase a firearm. The disorders would have to be chosen from researching past shootings and what they had. Bi polar, schizophrenia seem to be at the top of the list.
Persons that are prescribed psychotropic medications for the above disorders are required to be drug tested monthly. If they fail the test , they get admitted to a mental hospital until they are medicated and their disorder is under control again.
Stop and frisk gets implemented between midnight and 5am. Regardless of city. This is to try and curb drive bys in the inner cities and contain illegal firearms.
If one has had a personal protection order filed against them , they lose their right to a firearm for 5 years after the order has expired. At that time they need to go up in front of a board to access if they can have their rights returned to them.
Once these are implemented the firearms control debate is done. If a tragedy happens the blame goes to the person , not the tool used. I know many of my suggestions have violated Constitutional rights, but currently that is what the anti gun crowd wants to do anyway. I feel if we violate these rights both sides have come to a compromise and it might actually do something to curb the violence. There are always going to be bad people out there willing to do bad things, so we will never see all violence go away.
the media has only covered the horrific parkland murders as an issue about guns, instead of a tragedy that was likely preventable if not for multiple errors made by the government and local authorities.
I don't think presenting this school shooting as a gun issue has moved the ball on the gun ban debate at all. cnn et al showing crying teens has been exploitive of these young people. if anything, the one sided, emotional coverage on the part of the media has sewed more distrust of the media, not changed the debate on gun bans.
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